As far as any decision goes, needs are easily abandoned. It’s hard work seething, and lack of pretense brings little satisfaction. Beauties of the valley capped by their dome cries out for severance from every governance. In the cold hills of Adam it’s thought to be the end. No more showboats carrying rank wine adrift on high seas. It’s someone else, causing agitation. makes life appear as lifelike as NOW. They’ll emerge on all fronts spend lonely time searching. They wait among the rushes on an oilcloth playing cards. The high card, Ace of Spades, their alignment in representing death’s dominion. After the levels of the sun has reached a day’s peak they have finished singing. Then taking long draughts from their rusty scuppers
Manifest Destiny
As opulence enters, the eyes open wide. It makes me happiest, when opulence leaves. I keep talking about
the sparrows flocked close to the Pavilion. They set a course, fiercely objecting to the little things. In resort to slander following the rules that they can't deny. They're observed,
only feeling fiery with flexed wings.
Agreeing on one thing, they like it much better flying over tank towns.
Here, the windows bolted right before every evening. They kayo all the words considered as breathing.
Figureheads
Managing to remain on top, to follow the bouncing ball. keep my mouth shut, when shaking hands, with leaders of men. It gets me nowhere, with a mottled face that lacks the words to end an encounter. Plans in the making, lined up one by one. In the days that follow, a big strong line reaps the fruits of our labors.
Embrasure
There’s entrance to this chamber, one that’s more tiny than dusty. The routine inhabitants, some who are insistent. Their guarantee is scripted. through a break in the skin. They form like a crystal but of your own making. It’s in a swirling dedication, to a faraway press of desire. But there is never room for things uninterrupted.
Bio: Michael Igoe, neurodiverse city boy, Chicago now Boston, recovery staff at Boston University Center For Psych Rehab. Many works appear in journals online and print. Recent: Spare Change News(Cambridge MA), thebluenib.com, minerallit.com. Avalanches In Poetry Anthology@amazon.com. National Library Of Poetry Editor’s Choice For 1997. Twitter: MichaelIgoe5. poetryinmotion416254859.wordpress.com. Urban Realism, Surrealism. I like the Night.
You can't always tell where the future lies. We’re in streets paved by alibis. With a witless grace you come to realize, a future will reflect sharp recall of past. In chained trace, among buildings of glass and steel, eagerly expecting a howling eureka. The sound sustains in the current light. In growing gaunt, cheekbones break, the hairline silvers. Kowtowing at baseline claiming a performance defiant at an end of day. But there’s an urge to run watching what’s awkward. And then you’ll run with a hum electric Keeping in mind,
you can't
sidestep
Dispatch From St. Louis
All of a sudden, it dawned on me, to break the silence. Here’s where rarely we endure a freeze. Ice is going to melt, on your zany photo. The one you taped up, on back of your stove. It’s not allowed here, even if it’s piecemeal. Commodes furnished, with their steel mirror. My eyes grew narrow from high beam lights. After I took to watching
the Mississippi
shimmer.
A Super Deluxe Poetry Showcase for Michael Igoe (early-mid 2021)2 poems from Michael Igoe – September 2022Last Frontier by Michael Igoe (Prose stories) Last Frontier
Beyond the Pale no one goes, within or without. Here it's important in sleep consistent without presence of a towering idol. The trestles of viaducts, shelter for working men. Rock salt covers calloused hands. As for myself, I require, the birth of every desire. Palm print saying I need to wrestle with all the trees.
Remittance Man
He plants the rough kiss on the left of her cheek. It brings to mind a former motive and base moves. She gauges intentions out of a pale archway, by her sleight of hand. It's understood why he continues. In the arched smile, warming a window. It’s a great day in the morning. Neither knew she was equal, to expanding sets of mere explosion. Of good luck aware, the washstand brings. Where with mascara her eyes are opened.
A Super Deluxe Poetry Showcase for Michael Igoe (early-mid 2021)Poetry by Michael Igoe: Chaser & In Garnet LightLast Frontier by Michael Igoe (Prose stories) Last Frontier
Bio: Michael Igoe, neurodiverse city boy, Chicago now Boston, recovery staff at Boston University Center For Psych Rehab. Many works appear in journals online and print. Recent: Spare Change News(Cambridge MA), thebluenib.com, minerallit.com. Avalanches In Poetry Anthology@amazon.com. National Library Of Poetry Editor’s Choice For 1997. Twitter: MichaelIgoe5. poetryinmotion416254859.wordpress.com. Urban Realism, Surrealism. I like the Night.
The Way of A Hero
Certain castes tend to agree to own a certain anonymity. Though its lessons may sag it continues outlining plans. It no longer ages, it plays all things closer to the vest. Not extreme, nor exuberant. They got that spirit of cautious departure from an ill lit corridor.
Tunnel Vision
Using glass eyes you fill the roles of missing eyes. Both will be judged by rhythmic method in older swan songs. Songs of Adam, those from Eve. One precedes another in two separate gardens. We made a decision completely dead set against their slander.
Human Intervention
As you entered, you were saying, “We carry baggage from the living years.” It’s the meaning of living in sin. You know I am the one who gave you a cornet. But it’s been ages since you played it. You stored in a crate with the grease guns. Marked as property of the Christ Child. Its later posed in secret alongside a steel guitar.
Think Of it as Fire
In an everyday season, I am the everready one to foster blank children. Made out of spare parts: Venus as the little coach who fashions them in mist. The sense of dread descends when they continue thriving.
Part 2
I'm past a barnyard,
that place of slaying.
I will greet there,
blanked children
who all too often
with eyes crossed
fashion phantoms
out of spare parts.
They live certainly
to thrive elsewhere.
A tiny venus as coach
working through mist.
Subdue
A rise insea level provides the clue to what I missed. A routine discovery, serving weightlessly as due compensation. For an angry era spent in squalor cutting new teeth. Badness lends meaning, to events an angel incurs. Laughing, falling, failing, in courageous retaliation.
The Stellar Marine
I'm having much trouble
weeding out streets unfit to walk.
I tread slowly through the snows
of a recent nor'easterner.
as the recent customer
of a bottle of milk, and a dime newspaper.
I see fit to change paths,
past master of the clutch
a recent jamboree of poses behind me.
In a city that boldly confronts the sea
I stop for the traffic's beat
love letters roast in searing flame
outside the radius of wind and shore
stretching to New Bedford.
There, nor'easterners, I guess,
cease in sumps.
I wake up with your presence on me.
I turn over in the starry wind.
To feel my hands, tongue, and feet hush.
They report through lifelines and sinew,
extremities guide them,
to recesses and removes.
They chalk up casualties.
Drink in each other's frames,
bound in a spiral,
we see the gust tamed
find ourselves without a rancor.
Gusts across water and sky,
equal to the stellar marine.
We cater to friends, they share
the same downward spiral:
to swap proofs and secret messages.
Highly Visible
We live it out in an era
with ferris wheel tickets.
We stand under viaducts,
paused in our grim march
toward that other Mayday.
A hope continues
for the secret vial
full of evidence
we look hard for.
Every biblical figure,
smashed to smithereens
roams under arches.
They plant a warm horror
on a rebel girl sunbathing.
A Portrait of Ray
Seems like you touched someone,
right near the heart of the Hun.
Those guesses of yours,
as you entertained crowds;
in vogue, lucky, to entertain half price.
You tame them all to start, downtown;
hypnotized crowds, they all wonder
if they're flesheaters, just like you.
They kept a record: an electric image,
of your smiling shattered teeth
the death' head tattoo you got
one day before you shipped out.
You never look at it closely,
instead you collect tin foil wrappers
from under chrome bumpers
to stage your lavish midway spectacle.
Next time I saw you, same as before,
You had long since confessed to eating flesh
it was the color of the rouge on faces
of women who claimed to love you.
Your eyes, also red, both of us knowing,
the hand really is quicker than the eye.
We're so wary of the moves it takes
to heal scar tissue from wounds in the corridor.
And I rifle through the boxes you left
to slip further along the empty aisles.
Rage Between Equals
Do you remember
all what you said:
the electric guitar
is soon to replace
an automatic rifle.
Interlopers clinched
in the heat of battle,
they find out blindly
about greasy bullets.
Success as the fuse
to sites of extinction.
They saw everything
through rose glasses.
Only beleaguered
by the five senses.
The sound of a note
amplifies on strings
representing itself
as a whiz vibration.
It's faster than
a speeding bullet.
In Certain Climates
Right over there there are infants darkly fondled, roaring mothers roll on their sides. Trying to console, but seem sunless, drinking together balanced droughts of dynamic violence. It’s a sped up version of an empty landscape.
Elliptical
Rumors stymied dreams of dying. Panic laid to rest, through mourning. Over barren fields slight brown hands grasp at their allies. Only when unbound they sweat and suffer stripped of vision they agreed to beg. They talk it over at off brand meals. They joined the ranks, of a blackened captain who believes tobacco, is a cleansing penance. They go rent rooms they’re shared with former hairdressers
retired safecrackers.
Inborn
Underneath a chassis,
a white glove touches
greasy stacks of boxes.
The bullets inside them
spill out on cold ground.
A file of sultry generals
assembles in a building.
In the shape of a Basilica.
Scarved girls
at work within
are busy washing
their china dishes.
To find themselves
not quite so lonely
when dishwashing.
Funeral Lilies
Necessary arrangements
are taking up more time.
Following rigid orders ,
we pick those flowers that bloom in skeletons.
Straightening creases,
ones real or imagined.
We read the rumors,
in the gossip column
we put them all down
to a misunderstanding.
Thanks to St. Jude,
for favors granted.
He’s close to the kin,
who perish among us.
But ones assembled,
give him due respect.
It seemed odd,
to think it's sad,
achieving a thrill.
Using only one word
that soothes our soul.
At a hot dog pit
south of 95th
we will arrive
at his funeral.
We meet brazen kings making no mistakes
about power wielded
A Kansas City woman
calls a broom a rocket.
To match things up
she took a chance
to stand in line
so she can shake
the mayor’s hand.
She sure hoped he’d die
when he stole the election.
They both sit in the grandstands,
between the one eyed vagabonds.
A Quick-9 Interview with Michael Igoe
Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?
Michael: I started writing at about 15 or 16. I had little interest until then, I was encouraged by a musician buddy to do this. What I was reading was mostly trashy detective stories and horror, sci-fi.
Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?
Michael: A lot of what I see and hear is contemporary work- Joy Harjo, Jericho Brown. I still revere the beat poets, especially Corso and Ginberg. Surrealism, Dada, and Symbolists are about as far back as I go. I've heard that "an artist is true to the times." So be it.
Q3: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing? Have any travels away from home influence your work?
Michael: I grew up on the South Side of Chicago which is a pretty fabled place for childhood. It definitely had a great influence, at one point I spent a lot of time portraying neighborhoods and people in them.
Q4: What do you consider the most meaningful work you've done creatively so far?
Michael: I have a few favorites from my own work. One of them is in that great anthology, Avalanches in Poetry
Q5: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?
Michael: I think because of the way I was brought up I shied away from identifying myself as an artist. It happened by default.
Q6: Favorite activities to relax?
Michael: I study Tai Chi and it has aided me immensely.
Q7: Any recent or forthcoming projects you'd like to promote?
Michael: No! I send out submissions; that's all. I write for the people I'm with.
Q8: What is a favorite line/stanza from one of your poems or others/Favorite artwork?
Michael: "Nighthawks" the Hopper painting. I had a reproduction on the wall at college.
Q9: Who has helped you most with writing?
Michael: I have to say the late Allen Ginsberg. I corresponded with him for 2 years. I showed up at his Institute in Boulder and met up with him again when he read at Harvard.
Much too busy in the searching for new kinds of bloodsport. I can’t help but think, everything's the same. In exponential panics owning to indifference. But who is the mystery guest, traveling on the mystery train. He’s a long distance runner in dismay while he fox hunts. Deep in the vacant park, he lays down on asphalt he feels its gentle current. We recognized his many faces as the parts of a physical form. If it happened otherwise we couldn’t know them.
In Garnet Light
If it's garnet light we’ll be as lucid as we’re tranquil. Like the real name of our favorite sea on moon’s surface. Through the hole in the roof, stars gleam by the thousands like the steel on an ax handle. Feeling bumped from ever ready cat's paws. Now the diesel howls, demands are known for all of its payloads So where were we, here with the saint You need to tell Joey, he's the younger man. He just left from church, one where his head hides behind the softest stones. It’s the Angel Gabriel he takes as a moniker the beautiful monster I will always rely on. The kids at church seem to feel sorry. “I am really sorry God, for whatever I’ve done.” God tries to understand.
Bio: Michael Igoe, neurodiverse city boy, Chicago now Boston, recovery staff at Boston University Center For Psych Rehab. Many works appear in journals online and print. Recent: Spare Change News(Cambridge MA), thebluenib.com, minerallit.com. Avalanches In Poetry Anthology@amazon.com. National Library Of Poetry Editor's Choice For 1997. Twitter: MichaelIgoe5. poetryinmotion416254859.wordpress.com. Urban Realism, Surrealism. I like the Night.
Fevers of the Mind 